When prefects from hell strike

By Nikko Tanui

To be appointed prefect is quite an honour.

When one is chosen, he or she becomes the envy of many ordinary students.

In boarding schools, prefects enjoy many privileges such as being exempted from mundane school duties and an extra plate of weevil-filled githeri when everyone else goes to class on a half empty stomach.

However, the moment some are appointed to watch over the rest of the learners, they act as if they have been crowned kings or queens.

Some of them literally forget what brought them to school in the first place. They fail their examinations even as they make many trips to the staffroom to report fellow students over trivial issues, such as who lined up for a second helping of watery school porridge.

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Other prefects have the audacity to add their own laws to the school ones, simply to make the lives of other students as miserable as possible.

These prefects get some student to wash their own clothes or plates. No wonder some disgruntled students always scheme on how to get revenge. In day schools, the prefects’ day of reckoning is closing day. As soon as the school is declared closed, the disgruntled students run to hide in the bushes along the roads. Armed with all sorts of crude weapons, including rungus, they lie in wait to pounce on unsuspecting prefects on their way home.

This makes some prefects to avoid attending the school’s closing ceremony.

Such prefects should be reminded that being overzealous in their duties, earns them enemies and, truth be told, teachers consider them fools.